7 Steps to Turn Your Product Business Into a Subscription in 90 Days

Already have a product-based business? Ready to stop guessing at your revenue and start building consistency? In this episode, I'm sharing the 7-step roadmap to launch your subscription box in 90 days or less. From pricing and product planning to audience building and launch strategy, this is the episode that turns your one-time buyers into reliable monthly subscribers.

Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams.

Welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. In today's episode, I want to talk about turning the business that you already have into something more consistent and more scalable. If you're selling products online or in person and you're tired of starting over at zero every single month, a subscription box can change everything. I started mine because I wanted to create this intentional experience, and I also wanted that recurring revenue. I wanted to know what was coming in every single month and not just cross my fingers and hope I had a good weekend of sales. And you, you already have the hardest part because you have products that a customer already loves. You've got an audience, you've got proof of concept. Now it's all about putting that into a subscription box. So if you have a product-based business already, I'm going to walk you through these 7 steps today. I've broke them down so that you can follow this all the way from idea to launch in 90 days or less. And so whether you're listening while maybe you're packing orders or you're driving your kids around town, this episode is going to help you take action. So let's get into it. So step 1, many people overcomplicate this step, but step 1 is just simplifying your tech. Okay? Tech isn't the hard part about launching a subscription. So I don't want you to let it slow you down. Like it, froze me for a while. I was so worried about how I was gonna make this work tech-wise that I sat on my idea for over 18 months. But there's really only two platforms that I recommend and that I teach inside Launch Your Box, and that is either Shopify or WooCommerce. So you don't need to go out there and research like dozens and dozens of potential websites. You just need to pick either Shopify or WooCommerce and move forward. And if you are one of those like, I I want to DIY it, I want to do it myself, then I would go Shopify. I think it's the easiest, simplest thing to get a website up. If you'd rather hire somebody, they may choose WordPress, which is the WooCommerce combination, or Shopify. So it doesn't matter which one you pick, but you need to get started. You got to just pick one and move forward. And I want you to hire help because if tech isn't your strength, you will sit on that for a long time, just like I did. You've got to get this set up and you've got to get it set up right. So if you're not techie, go ahead and hire that out. I had a WordPress site for my business and basically all it was was it was my store location, my store hours, how you could contact us. And it was just very much like a Google listing. It was like a Google, you know, shop listing where you could find a place of business in your town. And so because I already had it on WordPress, I used WooCommerce to set up my subscriptions and I hired help to make sure, one, it got done, because if I had to learn how to set up my own website, that was going to take me months and I didn't want to take months with this. And so I wanted to make sure it got done in a timely manner and I wanted to make sure it was done right. Now, once you feel like you've got the tech in motion, it's time to decide what goes in that subscription box. And the cool part about being a product-based business owner already is that you already know what your customers love. So we're gonna use our best sellers to build this box. And so step 2, choose what goes in this box, okay? So the goal here is to curate something that gives you an ability to scale. Okay, as a product-based business owner, you already have the luxury of knowing what sells. So you have sales data that you can go look at. And what I want you to look at is look at your sales data and decide what are your top 3 to 4 best-selling categories, like what sells the best in your store. For me, graphic tees was always a number one seller. I would sell a graphic tee every time one hit the floor in my retail shop. I sold tons of purses and totes and bags. They were great for every day. They were great for seasons and holidays. So that was my number 2. And number 3 was accessories. I mean, accessories of all kinds. So I was selling earrings and bracelets and scarves and tumblers and all kinds of accessories. And so I took those 3, my best-selling categories, and I decided to build my subscription box around it. And there were, and there were things that weren't scalable in my business. So one of my other really top-selling categories at that time was hand-painted door hangers, and I had to eliminate this from this lineup because it wasn't scalable for me. It was going to be okay if I sold 20 or 40 even, but if I started to sell hundreds, that was going to be so stressful and so much work. So I want you to think about what is your best-selling categories that are also scalable. So these 3 categories were very consistent. I sold them every day. They were easy for me to, to buy, like they were easy for me to buy wholesale. Eventually I started sourcing them from overseas, and a lot of these products were lightweight, so I could scale this very easily. Okay, so let's think about that. What can I purchase easily for this box? What's going to ship well? Because those are some hard lessons learned along the way. Um, and does it have a good high perceived value? So a lot of times little items have a lower perceived value. If you were to get a necklace or a ring or an ankle bracelet and you just had a bunch of little items in a box, they have a low perceived value. So high perception is more of the bigger items. I want you to think about that as we start to walk through this process. But step number 2 You've got to figure out what goes in the box. And so we're going to start with some of those categories and we're going to go deeper in step 4 here in just a minute. Okay. But now that you have some idea about the types of product based on your best sellers, the next decision, and this is important, is how to price it. And you really need to do this before you start shopping for products. That's why I didn't go deeper into planning this out because we need figure out the pricing so that it makes sense when we start to plan out what goes in these boxes, because pricing sets the tone for the entire subscription and we can build it around data that we already know. Step number 3, price it before you plan it. Okay, so we're not going to curate the box and then decide that we're going to put a price on it because what happens is we're going to list all these things that we want to put in the box. and then we're going to say, well, I have to price this at $200 if I'm going to put all these things in there. That doesn't make sense. And so this is where price comes important. It comes before the products that you put in here. So we're going to price it first and then we're going to plan it out. Now, because you're a product-based business owner already, I want you to use your average order value. It's called AOV in our world, and we're going to use that as a baseline for selecting our products, curating our boxes. Is. When I started my subscription box, my AOV was $41. That meant on average, the people walking into my retail store and making purchases, they spent about $40 at the time. And you have to also remember, this was 2015-16, so we're talking over a decade ago, and, um, things were priced a little differently than they are today. We've had a lot of inflation since then. My average order value is now closer to $60, so you can to see where that went in, but I started with my average order value. So I priced my box at $40. This allowed me to deliver a really great experience while maintaining profit margins and understanding how much I could spend to curate a box and not overspending. I really focused on that perceived value of things. So perceived value meant kind of bigger substantial items, coordinating those items, coordinating themes, packaging, not a bunch of high-cost products. So when you look at perceived value, there's a lot of things that we can do that don't have to cost us a lot of money. To coordinate the items in my box, that doesn't cost me extra money. It just means piece 1 goes with piece 2 and goes with piece 3 as well. When I curate color combos or color palettes or themes, it just means it all goes together, and that creates a better perceived value and a better experience. It's not about how much stuff I can put in that box, but how much of a perceived value I can provide. And while you're doing this, while you've got your, your box price, we've got to keep an eye on profit. And your profit includes your product cost, your packaging costs, and your shipping. So what is your margin on that box? That's really, really important. So think about that as we start to plan in the next step. But once your price is locked in, now it's time to start curating what this looks like, not only for month 1, but we really need to map this out for several months so that we have a good idea of what this could look like, because that's going to help us in so many ways. It's going to help us with pricing, number 1. It's going to help us with packaging. What kind of packaging will I need? Can I buy it in bulk so it it lasts for more than just month 1. These are some things that are really important. So knowing this price value is going to help us as we map out the boxes. And you have another— you have another advantage as a product-based business owner already. You actually know what stuff costs. A lot of brand new business owners, they don't know, they don't understand. So they plan out these big beautiful boxes, and then they're very disappointed when they go to purchase things because they don't understand the price of things. So let's dig in to step number 4. Now that we figured out our best-selling categories, we figured out the pricing, we want to plan out 6 months of boxes. This really helps you map out what this will look like because we can't just figure out month 1 and then, oh, when I get that one sold, then I'll figure out month 2. But planning out 6 months at a time really gives you the consistency that you need in the business. It gives you the confidence that you need to continue to do this month month after month, and it really gives you space to grow this. We do not want to be winging this month after month after month. Talk about stress. That is going to cause you way too much stress. You're going to feel pressure. You're going to make mistakes. Okay. So when we do 6 months of planning, we're going to plan rough themes and product, you know, seasonality or color palettes for 6 upcoming boxes. We can do that with different product categories, different seasonal tie-ins, maybe different behavior patterns for the time of year. And I know that sounds a little like, what are you talking about, Sarah? But I have a free workshop and I go really in-depth with this 6 months planning, and it's a completely free workshop. You can find it at 6in60workshop.com. That link will be in the show notes for you. But I use this to plan everything out in 60 minutes. So I'm going to walk you through the brainstorming activity that I do every single time I dig into the 6 in 60 workshop. I plan it every 6 months. I do this exact formula every 6 months to plan my subscription boxes. And so I'm teaching you this to not only map out what this looks like right now for your first 6 months, but you can use this process over and over and over again. And it's really going to help you understand what you need and how this is going to look for you. But the goal here is not perfection. Like, you don't have to get it perfect. You don't have to get it right. What you want is clarity on what this looks like for you. You've got to have the vision for this to be long term. And if you can't do that for 6 months, it's going to be really hard to do this for long term. So I want you to really dig into this. And what I— the feedback I get from the Six in Sixty workshop is how eye-opening it is, how many changes, what they thought they would do to what they actually do after going through this process. So SixinSixtyWorkshop.com, completely free. Go take it and let's knock step 4 off of your list. But don't forget to do step 1, 2, and 3 first, because that's how people get it wrong. They plan without figuring out their pricing. Okay. Now, step number 5, there's a little bit of accountability here with step number 5, but you've got to choose and commit to your launch date. Okay. You've got to put your launch date on the calendar because this is what turns that idea that you've been swirling around in your brain night after night, week after week into action. This is the turning point for this 90-day timeline. You should be at step 5 around day 30, if not after the first week. Like, you can knock out steps 1 through 4 really quickly if you're excited about it and set some time for it. Okay. But I need you to get a launch date. Some people say, oh, I'll launch this summer. Oh, I'll launch in the fall. Oh, I'll launch sometime next year. And because they actually don't put a date behind it, it never happens. It always gets pushed out. There's always something else to do in your business that is more pressing and more important in that day. And we have to commit to this. We have to hold ourselves accountable because it's so doable. And I just imagine this, okay? If you're listening to me right now, close your eyes and I want you to think about 90 days from right now. You're running your product-based business, you focused on one-time sales, you got customers coming in out of your store, or maybe you have an online shop and you're waiting for that next beep on your website to say you got an order. What if 90 days from now you launch your subscription and you get 10 subscribers or 30 subscribers? Or 100 subscribers and you have 100 payments hitting that online shop in one day and you know you don't have to scramble around your shop packing 100 different orders, but you literally line up the boxes and you pack the same box 100 times and it's so efficient and it's so much better. And then you know what happens again at 120 days? Those 100 payments hit again. Like, that is possible. That is possible for anybody listening right now. So let's pick a date. Let's pick that launch date and give yourself a runway to prep and build momentum to this launch. Picking a 90-day launch date helps you finalize some tech. It helps you figure out what product you need and order it. It helps you build a waitlist. It helps you schedule all the marketing activities that you want to put around this. And also, by picking that date and sharing it with your audience, it's going to give you accountability. And it's something that I didn't realize how powerful was when I first launched our membership Launch Your Box. I picked a date in the fall, and my date was February something. I don't even remember what it was. And I had picked this date for back in August and gave me all the time I needed to build the membership and do all the marketing and build my audience and all the things that I wanted to do because I was starting this whole thing from scratch. And then what happened was my mom was hospitalized for several months and me and my siblings were trading off nights at the hospital and it just became very overwhelming. And it was fourth quarter in my retail business and there was a lot happening and the dust settles about mid-January and I'm like, I'm like, oh my gosh, I have to launch this thing in 3 weeks. I'm not ready. I'll push it back. And then here, here comes a message. I'm so excited for February for Launch Your Box. And I'm like, oh my goodness, I put this out there in the world. I have to just launch it. I'll just launch it. There's a few people that will want to join. I just have to get it out there. And I pushed forward and I launched Launch Your Box and I got 105 members. With not a lot of runway, with not a lot of prep, with not a lot of time because I was dealing with other things. But had I not had that accountability of sharing it with other people, I would never have had those first 105 members. And then my next launch, I got 400 members. And then my next launch, I got 900 members. And it was the most incredible year building LauncherBox. But if I would have kept pushing it back, it may have never happened that year. And so this is the ultimate accountability, is picking a date, committing to it, and sharing that with your audience so they can hold you accountable. With that launch date locked in, it's time to start a waitlist. So step number 6, we're going to build a waitlist and create some launch momentum. So this is where your pre-launch runway starts and really where the momentum really starts to begin. So this is when we make the announcement that, hey, I'm starting a subscription box, here's my date, and if you're interested, I want you to get on my waitlist. So we're going to create an email list for people who's interested in the subscription box. We need to collect the people, we need to collect them, the people that say they're the most interested. And if they're giving you their email, they are are the most interested. So we want to collect them on an email list because that will be our warmest, hottest list for launch. So to create a waitlist page, all you need on there is just a landing page on your website. We need to know who this is for, what's inside your box, why I should buy it, and a way for me to give you my email address. And then what we need to do with that waitlist, we don't just leave it alone until we launch. We've got to nurture that waitlist. We have to warm up that waitlist. So you can't just collect the emails and then wait till your launch date and say, okay, it's here. We have to help them know, like, and trust us. We have to make them excited. We have to create that hype around what's about to happen. And so I want you to send them a weekly email. Maybe it's behind the scenes of product planning or prepping for your first box. Maybe give them some sneak peeks of the first few boxes. You could do all kinds of things. Talk about your why, talk about what you're doing that week to prep for your launch or to prep for your subscription box. So we got to get the waitlist up. We've got to collect the people, even if it's a small list of people. It will convert well if you spend time nurturing it. So step number 6, build a waitlist and create some launch momentum. Them. Now it's time to launch. So we've talked about all the things, but execution is everything right now. And I know there's a lot of perfectionists listening, and I don't want you to hold yourself back. We've got to get this notion of it has to be perfect, or I have to have all the things the way I want it before I can launch it, and that's absolutely not true. Get the first box finalized, order your product, get your packaging, and then I want you to test everything on your checkout process. And don't wait till the night before you're supposed to launch. Don't wait till the morning of launch when people have problems checking out. I see this over and over and over again. Do it days before, do it weeks before so you can fix anything that needs fixing. And you know what? There's a lot of things that will need fixing. There's guaranteed to have at least one thing that's going to need fixing. So walk through your checkout process. I want you to check your payment. I want you to make sure your email triggers. I want you to make sure you have shipping set up. Like, let's test ship one if you've never shipped anything. And then we got to prep for our launch week. So inside Launch Your Box, we have a whole module dedicated to launching and we go over all the marketing things that you need to do— emails, lives, social posts, ads, anything that you are involved in your launch. We have a plan for that. We have a calendar for that. We have swipe files for that. So we need to do that. And then you need to launch with confidence. You've got to launch with confidence and excitement, whether you have it all together or not. And by the way, we most definitely don't have it all together, okay? You're going to learn as you go. When I launched my first subscription box, you heard me say that I didn't even— I wasn't even selling anything online. This was the first thing that I sold online. And so I had my retail customers, but I wasn't sure how this was going to land. I literally had a brown box and I used a rubber stamp to stamp my logo on the outside. And I was so proud of that little stamp and that little box. And I just needed to get it out there. It wasn't perfect. It wasn't the way that I really wanted it, but it was the way that I needed to learn. I launched that box hoping for 50 subscribers. I got 44 and I was so over the moon with 44. By month 3, I had 100 subscribers and I upgraded my packaging after I hit— that was my, that was my incentive, right? If I— once I get to 100 subscribers, I'm going to get some custom packaging. Until then, I use the brown box with a stamp. And I was able to continue to grow. It went from 100 to 150 to 250 to 600 and then to thousands. And I only grew because I actually launched. I didn't grow because it was perfect. I grew because I put it out there and I kept making the experience better and better as I went. You just heard like the full 7-step roadmap to getting that subscription launched in 90 days or less. And I want you to use it as encouragement and also accountability that if you've been thinking about launching, like, this is your sign. You're listening to this for a reason right now. You don't have to do everything today. Start with step 1 and work your way through step 7. Step 7: You already have a product-based business. You already know your customers. Now it's time to turn that business into a subscription they will love and one that brings you consistent, reliable revenue month after month. You've got the plan. Now let's go launch the dang thing.